Where Conscience Meets Desire: Refusal of Health Care Providers to Honor Health Care Proxies for Sexual Minorities
![handle is hein.journals/worts31 and id is 3 raw text is: WHERE CONSCIENCE MEETS DESIRE:
REFUSAL OF HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS TO
HONOR HEALTH CARE PROXIES FOR SEXUAL
MINORITIES
Shawna S. Baker*
INTRODUCTION
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and
renders the present inaccessible.I For many members of society, prejudice
towards sexual minorities2 originates from their teachings on ancient
religious texts.3 Somewhere in the sacred separation of church and state
* Assistant Professor of Law, Florida Coastal School of Law, Jacksonville, Florida. I wish to extend
my sincere appreciation to my colleagues Sonya Hoener, Christopher Roederer, Matthew W. Green, Jr.,
and Browne Lewis for their helpful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Stetson University
College of Law and Professor Ellen Podgor for hosting the Annual Florida New Scholars Conference at
the Gulfport/St. Petersburg campus on November 14, 2008, where I first presented this paper, Jessica
Smagacz, Jarett Iliff, and William C. Haynes for their dedicated research assistance, and Florida Coastal
School of Law for a summer research stipend.
1 MAYA ANGELOU, THE COLLECTED AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF MAYA ANGELOU 1009 (Random
House, Inc. 2004).
2 Sexual minority is defined as a gay, lesbian or bisexual person.
Bible: Leviticus 18:22 (New International) (Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that
is detestable.); Leviticus 20:13 (New International) (If a man lies with a man as one lies with a
woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on
their own heads.); Romans 1:26-27 (New International) (For this reason God gave them up to
shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the
men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men
committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their
perversion.); 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (New International) (Do you not know that the wicked will not
inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor
adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor
slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.). Quran: Sura 4:15 (A.J. Arberry trans.)
(Such of your women as commit indecency, call four of you to witness against them; and if they
witness, then detain them in their houses until death takes them or God appoints for them a way. And
when two [men] ... commit indecency, punish them both; but if they repent and make amends, then
suffer them to be; Gods turns, and is All-compassionate.); Sura 7:80-84 (Majid Fakhry trans.) (And
[remember] Lot when he said to his people: Do you commit indecencies which no one in the whole
world committed before you? You approach men instead of women lustfully; you are rather a people
given to excess ... And We rained a shower [of brimstone] upon them. See then what was the end of
the sinners.).
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Where Conscience Meets Desire: Refusal of Health Care Providers to Honor Health Care Proxies for Sexual Minorities
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